Prostitutes worldwide were this weekend congratulating Women’s Minister Harriet Harman on a job well done – as remarks she made to last week’s Labour Conference have dramatically increased business for sex workers using online site PunterNet.
A press release put out by the owners of the site pointed to a doubling in site …

@dunncha

Harriet gets it wrong, again...

What she should really making the headlines about is her own Government's Police and Crime Bill which, under the guise of "protecting" women, will actually make them *more* vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.

Whilst the Goverment has rowed back on its plans to criminalise anyone who paid for sex by making it a "strict liabilty" issue, ie if the woman was "controlled for gain" it wouldn't matter if you didn't know that fact, you were still guilty, they still define "control for gain" so badly that anyone working of their own free will would also be caught.

Not only that, but it allows "brothel closure orders" which are effectively defined as "anything the Police think is a brothel" without the need for proof or evidence!

Also, and possibly worst of all the Police will have a financial interest in getting prosecutions under the Proceeds of Crime Act, ie they can sieze money from working women if they think it was obtained illegally!

All this will do is force women who work in the sex industry into greater isolation or into the hands of unscrupulous pimps. meaning that any "protection" this law gives will actually make them *more* vulnerable because the women will not dare to report assaults or other crimes committed against them for fear of being arrested themselves.

Work experience for HH

Harriet Harperson really doesn't seem to understand the various causes she "champions". She should consider some work experience in the online sex trade during the next recess of Parliament. Perhaps she will then have subject knowledge rather than espousing nonsense, half truths and lies. Woman will be safer and have better equality when HH stops fighting their corner!

Harriet Harman

Dear Harriet....

Our security guru runs a neat app that looks for web spikes and warns the security admins if a particular IP address or range is getting a lot of outbound as a way of detecting trojan activity. Surprisingly, Punternet wasn't on our commercially-sourced ban list (!), but is now after just over 3000 hits on the day after your latest gaffe, Harriet. Now, out of an employee base of 11,000+ that's quite a lot of "honest-I-was-just-looking-out-of-curiosity" pervs AKA potential voters you're making a fool of yourself to, Ms Harman.

Re: Harman

>It gets on my tits all this bollox about women being exploited. If anyone is, it is us blokes that have to pay £50 odd a go. When you walk out of the place with an empty sack and an empty wallet it sure don't feel like the whore that is being exploited...

Remember...

This has little to do with Harriet Harman actually wanting to make a difference, and more about her jumping on a bandwagon that she obviously knows little about to curry favour with some voters that themselves may have so little understanding of the wider world that they actually listen to her.

But there is a cure for the disease that is the likes of Harriet Harman... it's called strategic voting.

Seriously...

...Hasn't she been sacked yet?

Was reading on the story about her little accident that she was previously convicted of doing 99Mph on the motorway... Which seems a bit of a coincidental speed to me. Seems almost like she was doing >100Mph (and so automatically guilty of dangerous driving and should have lost her licence and been in much more trouble) but some helpful plod either let her off with 99 or was leaned on to do so, because of who she was. Now apparently she doesn't think it necessary to stop following an accident - Her own comments at the scene make it pretty clear that she thinks she is too important to have to submit to such things...

This is someone that thinks she is qualified to preach morals to the rest of us?

Just politics as usual

It is critical that sex-for-money activities be made illegal in such a way as to make them available to the well-known while maintaining the threat of police action if someone were to publicize that they are servicing such a well known person...

Another clue-less popularist politician

@The Bug re. Or better still

"...some bloke in a dress with a funny hat believes that sex is bad."

Using elementary Googling skills, I've found lots of pictures of blokes wearing dresses and funny hats who obviously believe that sex is a good thing and great fun. You need to be more specific when you make that kind of statement.

Evil charities

"Clearly Harman's department has done no reserach on the subject."

Ah but this is what you need to realise - these batty laws dont' come from government, westminster of even whitehall; it's all the daffy NGOs and charridees that lobby minister directly that are driving this. Feminist NGOs are bypassing the democratic system to impose their views right at the top - and do the press report this? If a *business* was getting this kind of access and response the BBC would be all over it, but because it's a "charity" they think "oh, they're the good guys" and no one is fussed.